The increased use of color photographic light-sensitive materials has been accompanied by a steady increase in color development processing load. As a consequence, an effective reduction of pollution due to processing waste liquor and increased processing speed are currently in great demand.
Processing of color photosensitive materials generally consists of color development, bleaching and fixing or bleach-fixing, and rinsing and/or image stabilization. Intensive research for meeting the above demand led to the discovery that the pollution load due to processing waste liquor could be reduced by removing benzyl alcohol, a substance which is high in both BOD (biological oxygen demand) and COD (chemical oxygen demand) from the color developing bath while compensating for the resulting marked loss of development speed by using silver chloride-rich grains in the silver halide emulsion layers of the color photographic material to thereby increase the intrinsic development speed of the emulsion. These innovations are described in, for example, Laid-open International Patent WO 87-04534 and JP-A-62-269957 and JP-A-64-26837 (the term "JP-A" as used herein refers to a "published unexamined Japanese patent application").
An effective approach to hastening silver removal is to reduce the silver coverage of the photosensitive material. As a corollary, it is preferable to use 2-equivalent couplers rather than 4-equivalent couplers and more preferable to use couplers with high color developing properties. This approach has also been studied previously.
Referring to the washing and/or image stabilizing process, attempts have been made to shorten the processing time or reduce the rate of replenishment or refill for reduced pollution loads. However, as a consequence of these efforts, a problem has emerged in that stains develop during storage of the photosensitive material which mar the white background and color image. This condition is attributed to residues of the developing agent in the processed photosensitive material, which react with the residual unreacted couplers to produce stains.
Particularly, a photosensitive material adapted for rapid processing can be developed by using conventional non-rapid automatic developing equipment but alloting more time than usual to processing. This practice does not involve a new capital investment and, as such, is advantageous to users (when the process is carried out over a considerably long time, the processing temperature is sometimes lowered) but a marked degree of stain inevitably develops during storage.
The color print photosensitive material of the type that color photographs are viewed by transmitted light demands an increased emulsion coverage to insure sufficient color density but this results in a decrease in development speed and a prolonged developing time. Even when using this technique, marked staining is a major problem.
To correct these problems, several techniques have been developed for inhibiting the residual developing agent. These techniques are described in, for example, the specifications of JP-A-63-158545 and JP-A-64-86139.
However, the present inventors have found that when a silver halide color photographic material is made using the stain inhibitor described in the aforesaid patent literature, and a silver chloride-rich emulsion is developed with a color developer substantially free of benzyl alcohol, desensitization occurs during storage of the photosensitive material after exposure, although a marked inhibition of stain was attained. This indicates that this photographic material does not insure a stable image and has a serious drawback from a commercial standpoint.